infoTECH News

[December 21, 2012]

Eagle Valley Realty Revolutionizes Online Real Estate

Vail, CO, Dec 21, 2012 (PRWeb.com via COMTEX) --
Eagle Valley Realty is proud to announce the re-launch of its website, EagleValleyRealty.org. Months in the making, their new website now offers a slew of easy-to-use features that benefit not only Eagle Valley Realty and their clients, but whose programming is so unique that it will eventually benefit the real estate community at large.

Understanding that the future of the real estate industry is online, Eagle Valley Realty decided that their website needed a complete overhaul to take advantage of new technologies, bring themselves into the future, and offer a better online experience to their clients.

Partnering with Optimum7, a technologies company, Eagle Valley Realty has worked with Optimum7's senior programmers to design and develop a custom WordPress setup specifically suited to their needs as a real estate agency. Optimum7 has designed and developed the entire site from scratch after carefully studying and listening to the problems that Eagle Valley Realty was having with their old website.

Eagle Valley Realty's old website was built on WordPress's CMS. Prior to this project, there was only one plug-in available that was specifically tailored to the real estate industry. However, this plug-in was costly and posed a number of problems for Eagle Valley Realty because it had a slow backend, slow load time, causing problems for both Eagle Valley Realty and their clients; and it caused duplicate content issues due to the fact that all listings have the same content and information, which interfered with the success of their marketing strategy.

However, Eagle Valley Realty chose to continue to use WordPress because it is still the most user friendly content management system (CMS). So while the new website is WordPress based, its programming, until now, has been entirely unheard of in the real estate industry. All of the necessary functionality has been built right into the theme, which has been optimized through the incorporation of HTML5, microformats, and authorship.

Instead of relying on plug-ins, the theme is entirely widget based, which means that making changes and designs is as simple as clicking buttons, checking boxes, and dragging and dropping widgets into the field that will place content in the desired location on the website.

The backend of the website, where the website administrators make changes, is extremely simple to use, especially for business owners who do not have experience with HTML programming. The programming is intuitive and changes are made easily and instantaneously.

Traditionally, real estate website owners used a specific plugin that operated as a server for the Real Estate Transaction Standard (RETS), which is the system that transfers listings data between partners in the real estate industry. However, this made making changes to the backend difficult because changes had to be made in a user account serviced by the owners of the plug-in. The necessary changes couldn't always be made because the plug-in often lacked the necessary functionality. Real estate website owners were ultimately left reliant on the plug-in's service.

Eagle Valley Realty's website integrates WordPress directly with the MLS (multiple listing system), pulling information directly from RETS, rather than incorporating a third party server to do this, making load times much faster and changes simple and immediate.

Because one must have programming skills to use the MLS and RETS, a settings page was added to the theme so that Eagle Valley Realty could define their RETS credentials, thereby eliminating the need for the plug-in/server. Now the administrators of Eagle Valley Realty's website have a theme that offers them more control over their website and the content displayed on it.

Of the upgrade, Doug Seabury, a partner at Eagle Valley Realty, says "We have been so excited about the launch of this upgrade. It not only enhances our sellers' property exposure, but also augments our buyers' online property search experience, ensuring that every person looking for property in the valley will find the perfect match."
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Eagle Valley Realty is a real estate agency that operates in the Vail area of Colorado. For more information on this topic or to schedule an interview with Doug Seabury, please call (970) 390-8786.

Optimum7 is a highly consultative internet marketing and technologies company with offices in Morristown, New Jersey and Miami, Florida. For more information about their custom programming, please contact Arthur Cooper, CEO, by calling (305) 477-8960.